it was true to different degrees when obama got there. the pocket of integration, he is comfortable there. he would spend every day going to the south side which was 99% african-american, mostly poor, a vast sprawling rich area, ridge in terms of personnel, which he really felt that home for the first time in his life. he was embraced by a group of older black women who sort of took him under their wing and loved him and created a sense for him that he never felt before. but was incredibly frustrating. community organizing, you keep banging your head against the wall. during that period, he became a community organizer largely out of his mother's sensibility. she had done organizing of a different sort, trying to help poor women, partisans survive in the male-dominated culture. beliefs were transferred to him. that is why he did it but he also thought his mother was naive in terms of power realities of the world. in those three years on the south side, he started to see what power meant, how you get it and how to exert power and that took